In response to Alan Singer’s fiery tirade against the New York
Historical Society’s latest exhibit, “Revolution! The Atlantic World
Reborn,” I want to say we need a law that keeps historians away from
history exhibits. I say this only half in jest. It is often the
case that academic historians and professional experts in related
disciplines know too much about a subject to be able to distill what
they know into comprehensible exhibit formats; that is, they often
lack the ability to crystallize and translate what they know into
accessible visual and material embodiments. With encouragement and
guidance, they can do this, but it is not easy, and just why this is
true is evident from Singer’s lengthy exposition.
Singer disagreed with the history and/or the politics of the NYHS
exhibit. He disagreed so much, he felt obliged to issue a public
condemnation, accusing the exhibit of creating untruths under the
direct influence of members of the NYHS board whom he described as
“right-wing players in the war over what should be taught as history.”
In my view, his allegations should be dismissed, but for three reasons
other than politics.
1) These comments might be gossip; Singer’s arguments are based
entirely on supposition and speculation. Board
interference/participation in the exhibits of a museum is a topic too
big and too complicated to be so simplistically treated. Singer
provides no evidence to support what the board’s role was or was not
in this case. For example, if either of the board members or their
foundation were listed as sponsors or donors to the exhibit, one could
perhaps question their influence, but they were not listed among the
influential sponsors, which included the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the US Department of Education’s Underground Railroad
Program, the New York City Cultural Affairs Department, and the Nathan
Cummings Foundation.
2) Singer’s comments reveal misunderstanding (at best) or ignorance
(at worst) of the exhibit format, of which more in a moment, but I
wonder why did he not lay his accusations at the feet of the people
who actually did prepare the exhibit. These include, among numerous
designers and advisors, the very experienced public historian Richard
Rabinowitz, the equally experienced media producer Lynda Kaplan, plus
primary historians Thomas Bender of NYU and Laurent Dubois of Duke.
He treats these distinguished professionals like pawns in the hands of
the board.
3) Singer dismisses the exhibit as a “fairy tale,” but even by his
comments, the exhibit has to be considered a success in that it meets
its own stated goal, namely, to “respond to the growing public
interest in the history of other cultures,” (thus the inclusion of
revolutions in France and Haiti as well as America) by putting the
story of slavery outside national history, and presenting it as “a
global narrative.” Despite his protestations, Singer acknowledges the
global contextualization.
What concerns me most is the absolute inappropriateness of this long
narrative “review” of something that is basically not a narrative
format; Singer read the NYHS exhibit but did not see it. Not one
object, photograph, map, print, image, sculpture, tool, other
artifact, or graphic is mentioned. Not one second of media time –
whether in projected or computerized form – receives mention. Not one
experiential detail is shared.
I have seen this before, where professional historians have reviewed
exhibits and talked back to what the exhibit said, completely ignoring
what the exhibit showed. Exhibits are visceral (3-dimensional) and
actual (real-time events) but also intellectually simple formats; they
do not tolerate narrative debate and agonizing historical detail with
grace. But they do invite provocation. Points can be made through
design juxtaposition and uneditorialized, oppositional presentations
that would take pages of text. The most outstanding example of this
kind of juxtaposition remains Fred Wilson’s metal works display in his
path breaking “Mining the Museum” exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of
Art. He didn’t go into detail about how many slave shackles were made
as opposed to Repousse urns; he didn’t need to.
Singer refutes the NYHS exhibit point by point and takes 2811 words to
do so. If his response were translated into an exhibit format, his
words would fill 19 text panels, {granting him a generous 150 words
per panel). This would require an exhibit gallery that could
accommodate 95 linear feet for the panel displays alone, (giving each
panel a 2.5 foot buffer on all edges). Given that the average person
reads 40 wpm, this would require that the visitor stand and read for
70 minutes -- without counting the time it would take to step from
panel to panel or to lay eyes on the first object. Singer would give
us what is universally denounced in the museum field, and the curse of
every first-time history curator, the veritable book on the wall.
Can we not do better than this?
Darlene Roth, Ph.D.
1620 Longbranch Avenue
Grover Beach, CA 93433
darlene@darleneroth.com
805 473 1656
IN A QUANTUM WORLD, HISTORY JUST AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE!
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